Ahead of the International Women's Day on the coming Sunday, Eurostat has released a selection of data on the gender pay gap in 2013 in the EU, and it's anything but good news for Estonia, where women earned an average of almost 30 percent less than men.

Estonia should follow the example set by Lithuania, where the gap decreased from 21.6 percent in 2008 to 13.3 percent in 2013. Estonia, meanwhile, managed a further 2.3 percentage point rise.

At EU level, the gender pay gap decreased from 17.3 in 2008 to 16.4 percent in 2013.

Estonia, alongside Finland, also stands out for combining a high female employment rate (70.1 percent in Estonia, EU average 62.6) and a low share of part-time employment for women, whereas other member states with high female employment rate (like Sweden, Germany), also have a high share of women working part-time.

Women account for 49 percent of the total employed work-force in Estonia but the share varies greatly across occupations. Whereas only 33 percent of managers in Estonia are female, the number is 75 percent for clerical support workers and 76 percent for service and sales workers. The latter is again the highest share in the EU, 12 percentage points above the average.